Artieda

Overview

Artieda is a hill village of about 90 people at 652 metres above the Yesa reservoir, in the slice of Zaragoza province that belongs to the Jacetania comarca. Two things bring outsiders up the slope: a bunk and a cooked meal on a thin stage of the Aragonese Camino de Santiago, and the Roman town lying under the fields below the houses.

The village is 40 km from Jaca, 60 km from Pamplona and 166 km by road from Zaragoza. You come off the N-240 between Puente la Reina de Jaca and the reservoir, where a small sign on the left points to Artieda, Mianos and Ruesta, then climb the last few kilometres on the A-1601. Phone numbers here begin 948, the Navarre prefix, which tells you most of what you need to know about where the border runs.

Everything in Artieda is uphill. The lanes are cobbled and the houses are mountain stone, and the two things worth stopping for on the walk up are the doorway of the old palacio de los Pagos or Diezmos and the parish church of San Martín, Romanesque in origin and enlarged in the 16th century. From the top the fields and farms spread out below, with the reservoir and the Sierra de Leyre to the west.

You will see YESA NO painted around the village before you have parked. Raising the Yesa dam would put more of Artieda’s farmland under water, and the fight against it has run for decades; some fields beside the reservoir have already been expropriated without ever being flooded. Empenta Artieda, launched by the council in 2017, is the constructive half of the same argument: a participatory project against depopulation that has produced a community high-speed internet network, an ageing-in-place care scheme, and new shared spaces in the village. Around 100 people now live here all year, on farming, pig rearing, carpentry and, increasingly, visitors.

History

Artieda is documented from the 10th century, but the village then stood lower down, on the riverbank beside the Camino, with its houses strung along the road and a parish church dedicated to Santa María. It appears in a forged charter dated 842, then in 919 as a place whose inhabitants paid tithes to the monastery of San Salvador de Leyre, and again in 1098 when its church is listed among that monastery’s possessions.

The move up the hill was not planned, it was forced. During one of the Navarrese invasions, most likely that of 1136 or of 1283, the old riverside village beside the pilgrim road was destroyed outright, and Artieda was rebuilt on the knoll behind a ring of houses and blocks that worked as a defensive wall. The plan the villagers laid out then is the plan you walk today: at the centre they put the new parish church of San Martín, a tower, the hospital, the communal oven and the plaza.

San Martín itself carries the whole sequence in its stonework. The 12th-century Romanesque core survives in the semicircular apse; the 16th-century enlargement added two side chapels that read as a crude transept, and a choir at the west end on a timber frame. The retablos and the church silver are mostly 16th and 17th century, and the chapel of the Virgen del Rosario holds a 16th-century figure of the Santo Cristo. Outside, the square ashlar tower has a spiral stair built against it.

Digging started in the 1960s, when finds turned up at Campo del Royo, Forau de la Tuta, Viñas del Sastre and Corrales de Viñasués; the pieces recovered then, including pottery, capitals and columns, went to the provincial museum in Zaragoza. The modern campaign is a different order of thing. Excavation from 2021 exposed the structures of a previously unknown Roman imperial city at the foot of the Pyrenees, on the site locals call Forau de la Tuta, Campo de la Virgen or Campo del Royo, and the Aragonese government declared it a Bien de Interés Cultural in 2023.

The Roman layer is not only underground. A stretch of the paved Roman road that crossed the Canal de Berdún towards Pamplona survives in the municipal territory, and the same ground held the vanished hamlets of Villarrués, towards Mianos, and Arrienda, towards Ruesta. Six hermitages once stood in Artieda’s fields: San Pedro, San Babil, San Lorenzo, Santa Lucía, Santa Cruz and San Tornil, the last of them 12th century.

Visiting

The Torre Museo, in the church tower, is the one ticketed sight and it keeps short hours: Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 to 14:00, June to the end of September. Inside is a full-scale replica of the Roman tessellated floor from Forau de la Tuta, which is the only way to see it in one piece. Outside those months, or if you want a group visit, the village asks you to ring +34 624 22 82 65.

Everything else in the village is free and open air. The walk from the car to the plaza takes about five minutes up cobbled lanes and covers the church of San Martín, the doorway of the palacio de los Pagos and the Casa del Hospital. The council office is at Calle Mayor 17 and opens to the public on Tuesdays from 18:00 to 20:00 and Fridays from 9:00 to 14:00, which is when to ask anything that a website cannot answer.

The municipal albergue occupies a restored abbey next to the church and has 16 beds in four rooms of two bunks, with two shared bathrooms, a washing machine, a dryer and a lounge with a library, board games and wifi. A bed costs 12 euros, the whole four-bed room 50 euros, self-service breakfast 5 euros, the set menu 15 euros and 18 euros at weekends and on holidays; sheets are 2.50 euros to hire and non-guests can use the showers for 3 euros. Reception and restaurant run 11:00 to 16:00 and 19:00 to 22:00, extended to 10:00 to 22:00 through July and August. The kitchen cooks from the village’s own permaculture garden and mixes local Aragonese cooking with a strand of Mexican food, which is not what you expect at the end of a Camino stage.

The municipal campsite sits on the hill above, with 22 hard pitches wired for electricity, a lawn for tents, free use of a kitchen and barbecue, and drainage for motorhomes; it closes from December to March. Two wooden bungalows share the view west to the Sierra de Leyre, Monte Orba, the Roncal valley and the reservoir: Leire sleeps two with an optional third, Orba sleeps five at 90 euros a night, 100 euros on holidays, with linen included. A motorhome pitch is 7 euros plus 6 euros an adult and 4.50 euros for electricity. If you want a house rather than a bunk, the village lists two, Casa Blasco on Calle Mayor and Casa Pedro on Calle Luis Buñuel.

Walking is the reason to stay a second night, and the council publishes the routes by length. The shortest is the Mirador del Río Aragón at 2.5 km; then a loop to Mianos by Pasahuertos at 3.63 km, a 5.2 km circuit to the muladar where carrion birds are fed, 8.74 km to Leyre and the Paso del Oso, 9.25 km one way along the Camino to the castle at Ruesta, and a 10 km circuit of Peña Nabla with a vulture viewpoint over the valley. On a bike, Mianos is 8.47 km away and Ruesta 19.49 km by the family route.

The village also runs shared facilities that visitors can use or hire: a library, a multi-purpose room with a projector, a coworking space with internet and individual booths, a communal kitchen, a playground and a sports hall with a frontón, a basketball court and football goals. Beside the sports hall is a room with a bouldering wall where local teenagers train before climbing on the crags around the valley. Groups can book workshops through the council, from permaculture and cookery to photography, storytelling, natural cosmetics and an introduction to sign language.

Tips

• Time your visit for a Saturday or Sunday between June and the end of September if you want inside the Torre Museo. It opens 10:00 to 14:00 only, and outside that window you need to phone +34 624 22 82 65 to arrange anything.
• The council office answers in person only on Tuesdays from 18:00 to 20:00 and Fridays from 9:00 to 14:00. Otherwise use the phone or email on the contact page.
• Book dinner when you book the bed. The albergue kitchen only runs 11:30 to 15:00 as standard and evening meals are by reservation.
• Arriving between December and March means the campsite and its bungalows are shut. The albergue is the fallback, and the two village houses take bookings direct.
• Travelling with a dog costs you the whole four-bed room at the albergue, 50 euros rather than 12 for a bunk. On the campsite a pet is 2.50 euros.
• Walkers and cyclists who are not staying can pay 3 euros to use the showers, which is the cheapest way to clean up on this stretch of the Camino.
• Without a car, take the train to Jaca or Pamplona and then the bus towards Sigüés; the albergue’s directions page also lists a local taxi firm with its number.
• Driving times are honest ones on free roads: 45 minutes from Jaca, an hour from Pamplona, an hour and a half from Huesca, two hours 25 from Zaragoza. Parking in the village is free.
• The 10 to 15 August window is the busiest of the year, with the four days of San Lorenzo followed by the Día de la Virgen picnic at a spring in the fields. Book weeks ahead or come at another time.
• Set menus are 15 euros on weekdays and 18 euros at weekends and on holidays, so a midweek lunch is the better value.
• Artieda works well as a base rather than a stop. The Foz de Lumbier and Foz de Arbayún are 39 minutes away by car, the monastery of Leyre 29 minutes, Sos del Rey Católico 44, the monastery of San Juan de la Peña 47, Jaca 45 and the Mallos de Riglos about an hour.
• If you are here to walk, download the tracks before you leave. The council points walkers to Wikiloc for the routes around Peña Nabla and the river viewpoint.